28 October 2016

On The Wings Of A Bat

This little bat carries a heavy load on its shoulders. In a 1974 essay titled "What is it like to be a bat?" Thomas Nagel uses the bird with the double-jointed wings to argue that reductionist theories of the mind will never be able to explain consciousness. When neuroscientists scan the brain, the activity they see is not thought or memory, but the movement of neurons.
Enter Mary Midgley, a British philosopher who has likened philosophy to plumbing, and has accused her colleagues of habitually "biting off less than they can chew." She makes a similar argument, this time using an ordinary table as an example: to a carpenter a table is a solid object, while to a particle physicist a table is a group of atoms that is mostly empty space. Meanwhile, Nagel looks forward to the emergence of a post-materialist philosophy. And the little bat flies through a sky, suffused by the yellow of an unseen sun, oblivious to the shrinking horizons of the neuroscientists.
And you thought this post would be about about Halloween.

A note about the artist: Florence Lundborg was born in San Francisco in 1871 where she studied art with Arthur Mathews. After the turn of the century she moved to Paris where she studied with Whistler. Her mural, painted for the
Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 received a bronze medal. Fortified by this success, Lundborg moved to New York City where she illustrated books and became a staff member at a magazine called The Lark, where her woodblock prints often appeared on its covers.

Read: "What is it like to be a bat?" here.
Read: Are You An Illusion? by Mary Midgley, London, Acumen: 2014.

Image:
Florence Lundborg (1871-1949) detail of the cover of The Lark, November 1895, color woodcut, Mettropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

The list would be a long one, I think. Reading a book on an unrelated subject, I just found out that Alexander Stirling Calder (father of the more familiar Alexander Calder)also exhibited his work at the same expo in San Francisco. Small world.

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Why The Blue Lantern ?

A blue-shaded lamp served as the starboard light for writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's imaginary journeys after she became too frail to leave her bedroom at the Palais Royale. Her invitation, extended to all, was "Regarde!" Look, see, wonder, accept, live.

"I think of myself as being in a line of work that goes back about twenty-five thousand years. My job has been finding the cave and holding the torch. Somebody has to be around to hold the flaming branch, and make sure there are enough pigments." - Calvin Tompkins